Neuromancer / Pac-Man Vs. / Break Today
Jan. 1st, 2004 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishWilliam Gibson, Neuromancer
What can you say about The Quintessential Cyberpunk Book? I started flipping through it a few weeks ago and it just drew me in again. Bits of it feel very eighties, and occasionally the future Gibson paints is jarringly retro, but on the whole the book has aged quite well.
I'm not sure I completely believe in Molly, which may be a problem since I think she continues to show up in the next two books. Case, though. . . Case was damn near perfect. Ditto Armitage. (His last scene. . . wow.)
Shigeru Miyamoto, Pac-Man Vs.
Always it's the simple ones that make the best party games. This one is multiplayer Pac-Man, as weird as that sounds. Three players control the ghosts, on the television screen. The ghosts can only see a little bit of the maze around them. The fourth player uses a GBA hooked up to the GameCube via a link cable to control Pac-Man. With the GBA, Pac-Man can see the whole maze. If a ghost catches Pac-Man, the game starts over only now the ghost gets to be Pac-Man and Pac-Man plays as a ghost. So simple. . . and so incredibly fun. Spontaneous teamwork among the ghosts ("Upper right! He's in the upper right!") and frenetic cable-tangling, to the immortal sound of wakka-wakka-wakka. My only complaint is that neither the analog stick nor the D-pad are ideal control devices. Maybe if I could find four arcade sticks. . .
Greg Stolze & Chad Underkoffler, Break Today
The Mak Attax sourcebook for Unknown Armies. Lots of good crunchy bits: a new archetype, three new schools of magick, a few rituals, and Familiars (which are, in fact, sufficiently creepy). Mak Attax was one of those things in the main book that always struck me as kind of wacky-- they're a loose cabal of fast-food workers who pass magic 'charges' on to unsuspecting customers, who then have those charges manifest as spontaneous magick, in the hopes that with enough weird stuff going on the world will be better able to accept the existence of the unnatural. Or something. Anyway, the book gives them a lot more . . . not structure, as such, but organisation? Purpose? There's a lot of write-ups of individual Attaxers, and just seeing the detail on the specific people makes it feel a lot more 'real' and less wacky. I'm not sure it was worth $30 (%&$ hardback) but it's a great sourcebook.
What can you say about The Quintessential Cyberpunk Book? I started flipping through it a few weeks ago and it just drew me in again. Bits of it feel very eighties, and occasionally the future Gibson paints is jarringly retro, but on the whole the book has aged quite well.
I'm not sure I completely believe in Molly, which may be a problem since I think she continues to show up in the next two books. Case, though. . . Case was damn near perfect. Ditto Armitage. (His last scene. . . wow.)
Shigeru Miyamoto, Pac-Man Vs.
Always it's the simple ones that make the best party games. This one is multiplayer Pac-Man, as weird as that sounds. Three players control the ghosts, on the television screen. The ghosts can only see a little bit of the maze around them. The fourth player uses a GBA hooked up to the GameCube via a link cable to control Pac-Man. With the GBA, Pac-Man can see the whole maze. If a ghost catches Pac-Man, the game starts over only now the ghost gets to be Pac-Man and Pac-Man plays as a ghost. So simple. . . and so incredibly fun. Spontaneous teamwork among the ghosts ("Upper right! He's in the upper right!") and frenetic cable-tangling, to the immortal sound of wakka-wakka-wakka. My only complaint is that neither the analog stick nor the D-pad are ideal control devices. Maybe if I could find four arcade sticks. . .
Greg Stolze & Chad Underkoffler, Break Today
The Mak Attax sourcebook for Unknown Armies. Lots of good crunchy bits: a new archetype, three new schools of magick, a few rituals, and Familiars (which are, in fact, sufficiently creepy). Mak Attax was one of those things in the main book that always struck me as kind of wacky-- they're a loose cabal of fast-food workers who pass magic 'charges' on to unsuspecting customers, who then have those charges manifest as spontaneous magick, in the hopes that with enough weird stuff going on the world will be better able to accept the existence of the unnatural. Or something. Anyway, the book gives them a lot more . . . not structure, as such, but organisation? Purpose? There's a lot of write-ups of individual Attaxers, and just seeing the detail on the specific people makes it feel a lot more 'real' and less wacky. I'm not sure it was worth $30 (%&$ hardback) but it's a great sourcebook.